Op-ed: As Muslim population mushrooms, we may be seeing last days of Europe as we know it

Giulio Meotti|Published: 02.05.11 , 11:04

We are living through the self-extinction of the European civilization that shaped the age we live in. In his new bestselling book “Civilization,” renowned Harvard historian Niall Ferguson writes: “If the Muslim population of the UK were to continue growing at an annual rate of 6.7% (as it did between 2004 and 2008,) its share of the total UK population would rise from just under 4% in 2008 to 8% in 2020, to 15% in 2030 and to 28% in 2040, finally passing 50%in 2050.”

Ferguson is not alone in using the term “Eurabia” to describe an Islamicized, senescent European continent. Historian Bat Ye'or spent her career studying the phenomenon and Professor Bernard Lewis told German daily Die Welt that “Europe will have Muslim majorities at the latest by the end of the 21st Century.”

The global number of Muslims is expected to jump by 35% in the next 20 years, growing twice as fast as the non-Muslim population, according not to these “Eurabia mongers,” but to the famous US Pew Forum, which published projections Muslim population growth between 2010 and 2030.

The most frightening figures are in Europe. Some of the biggest increases in Europe’s Muslim population in absolute numbers over the next

20 years are expected to occur in the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Germany. The Muslim populations in Italy and Sweden are projected to “more than double in size.” Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, President of the Italian Episcopal Conference, warned about Italy’s “slow demographic suicide” and Italian Father Piero Gheddo, a doyen of Vatican’s missionaries, warned that "Europe will be dominated by Islam in the space of a few generations."

A low European fertility rate, massive immigration from Muslim countries and a confident Islamist minority are turning the cradle of Western civilization into its grave. As historian Walter Laqueur has warned, these are “the last days of Europe.”

Losing precious gifts

All over Europe, the number of births has dropped in comparison to the number of deaths year after year. For a stable population a nation needs a fertility rate of 2.1 live births per woman. That’s roughly the case in what America. Israel has a significant 2.6 rate. Meanwhile, Italy shows one of the world’s lowest levels of fertility: 1.3. Canadian journalist Mark Steyn, author of “America Alone,” has warned that at the end of the 21st Century there may “still be a geographical area on the map marked as Italy,” but this will “merely be designation for real estate.”

While, Austria was 90% Catholic in the 20th Century, Islam could make up the majority religion among Austrians under 15 years of age by 2050, says American journalist Christopher Caldwel. In the four largest cities of the Netherlands – Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht – Mohammed, with the variations of Mohamed and Muhammad, is the leading name among newborns. The same is true for the European Union’s capital, Brussels.

Elsewhere, only 3.2% of Spain’s population was foreign-born in 1998. Now it’s more than 15%. According to the Pew Forum, France’s Muslim population will increase from the current 4.7 million to 6.9 million in 2030. Indeed, demography is changing all European cities: The populations of Amsterdam, Brussels and Marseille is between 20 and 25% of Muslim; Birmingham, Cologne, Copenhagen, London, Paris, Rotterdam, Stockholm, Strasbourg and The Hague are between 10 and 20% Muslim; Berlin, Hamburg and Vienna are between 5 and 10%.

The problem is that the fastest-breeding demographic group in Europe is also the most religious and the one most resistant to the pieties of a liberal democracy. It’s not difficult to imagine how this confrontation between a European atheistic apathy and an Islamist theological turmoil will end.

The Muslim Brotherhood runs most European mosques. Its front groups are courted by Western governments and media. Europe is one of their priorities. They call it “dar al shaadi”, the land of mission. Yusuf al Qaradawi, the most famous guru of the Brotherhood, spoke clearly: “Islam will return to Europe, not by the sword, but with proselytism.”

Europe risks losing all its precious gifts: Human dignity, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, rule of law, separation of state and mosque. Across Europe there are dozens of journalists, cartoonists and writers who are living under terrorist threats.

The latest WikiLeaks files revealed that at least 35 Guantanamo terrorists were radicalized in London mosques before being sent to fight the West.In the UK there are 80 sharia courts operating like a legal apartheid within common law. These courts are based on the rejection of the principle of inviolability of human rights. The courts formalize the “talaq,” the repudiation of the wife by the husband, polygamy, the right to “rebuke” the wives and the prevention of intermarriages.

Jews a barometer of tolerance

Holland - with all of its rules against discrimination - is already a segregated society. The biggest mosques in Europe frame the vibrant green, luxuriant, wooded, watery Dutch countryside. At the Zuidplein Theatre, one of the most prestigious in Rotterdam, an entire balcony was reserved for Muslim women. This is not happening in Pakistan or Saudi Arabia, but in the city where the Founding Fathers set out for the United States.

The Economist, a publication far from anti-Islamic ideas, spoke of Rotterdam as a “Eurabian nightmare.” This nightmare is threatening the Jews too. Anti-Semitism in Western Europe last year was “the worst since World War II", according to the Jewish Agency. It will only worsen in the future. Books such as Mein Kampf and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion are prominently displayed bestsellers in Muslim stores on Edgware Road in the heart of London.

Let's not forget Ilan Halimi, a young Jewish man from Paris, kidnapped and tortured without anyone intervening in the surrounding apartments of the housing projects from. Residents heard Halimi’s screams but didn’t say a word.

In Sweden, a country described by The Guardian as “the greatest success the world has known,” Jews are leaving large cities such as Malmo due to security reasons and anti-Semitic attacks. Dutch liberal guru Frits Bolkestein just sparked an uproar in the Netherlands by saying that Jews have “no future here and should immigrate to the US or Israel.”

The famous Holland of Baruch Spinoza, the shelter of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews who fled the Inquisition, is making way for a realm of fear, intimidation and subjugation. Jews are also fleeing Antwerp, the city once proudly called “the Northern Jerusalem.”

Anti-Semitism is an eruption of barbarism into our civilization and the Jews have always been a barometer of tolerance. When the Jews will be gone from Amsterdam and Antwerp, nothing will be the same in Europe. We should not be surprised if one day, under the Eurabian banner, these new Europeans will try to expel the descendants of the Holocaust from the land of Israel. This second Shoah will be called "Peace and Justice for Palestine."

Giulio Meotti, a journalist with Il Foglio, is the author of the book A New Shoah: The Untold Story of Israel's Victims of Terrorism